You gave me Guild Wars 2 for one of your examples, that game has flying in it, and i checked out the gameplay for that, it still looks like convenience to your own admission.
It does look like it plays differently, so is your problem with WoW’s Flying is you want it to control like GW2, where it’s WoW’s equivalent is the vehicle controls we got?
Maybe if you explain more about those two examples you picked out and explain why these are gameplay and not conveniences, where in WoW they are conveniences and not gameplay, (two of these aren’t mutually exclusive one another by the way) i would understand it better.
Ehh Shame, i was hoping for a productive/substantive conversation on that.
It doesn’t currently, no – but being grounded in a world that challenges players does create more opportunities for interaction. Adding a third axis creates a significantly larger number of individual locations for player characters to exist – purely on a mathematical standard, it reduces player interactions by spreading a known quantity of players out over a larger amount of possible space.
Pathfinder is good in a lot of ways, and as I said earlier, I like the system as it is, despite the misgivings I have about Blizzard’s success (or lack thereof) finding the right time to enable flying in an expansion. Part of the reason I like it is because it is a balance – the pre-flight phase of an expansion forces those player interactions at a time when the world we’re exploring is potentially challenging.
There are world quests that involve killing elites that I routinely trounce now as DPS that I wouldn’t have dared attempt solo outside of a tank spec at the expansion’s launch, for example.
Both pre- and post-flight phases have their place, and their merits. I personally grow very tired of people advocating for the outright removal of Pathfinder. The time gate is imperative for flight’s continued implementation. The only question in my mind is exactly how long that time gate needs to be. IMO, one or two content patches is long enough.
As-is, it’s a good system that strikes a balance. How well that balance is struck is definitely up for debate, though.
But again, just to be clear about my thinking, there is functionally no difference between purchasing Four Winds training in order to access a daily hub and paying an NPC to open a permanent portal to the daily hub.
Everything in this game is ‘nothing more than pixels’. I don’t get it.
What exactly is your post about? What do you mean by a “mount revamp”? If this post has any actual point, it went by me with a whooshing sound. Try again, and please, be a bit more coherent.
That’s a low-resolution understanding of the point I’m making. Our characters are pixels, animation, and sound, but have systems of player agency attached to them, decision-making and customization.
Pet battles have this in the form of team configuration, the abilities the individual pets in those teams have, a progress component, and tailor-made content just for them.
It would be great if mounts had anywhere near that level of complexity, and at least more than being purely cosmetic speed boosts that they are now.
Fun fact - Blizzard saves animation frames/development on mounts by not differentiating flying animations from swimming. Flying as it exists in the game presently is not actually flying so much as it is the ability to swim through the air at high speed.
The truly shallow nature of flying as a gameplay system is apparent whenever your mount’s model doesn’t load up and your character’s just zipping through midair. Funny, but there’s not a lot of substance there.
While i agree with what you’ve said here, didn’t you say this earlier?
Not to argue against this, but the way it’s implemented, it’s more or less an extra talent row exclusively for all (if not 99%) of your current character’s mounts. I never really liked the way they implemented it and wish they did it for just pick and choose for which mounts get what individual equipment. Personally, it would encourage well… more input and decision-making, instead of just hastening/removing the need of player’s input by just slapping 3 - 4 buttons all across the mounts per character.
What if i just want to give my Bee mount anti-daze, have my bike be waterwalking, and my strider have a parachute? I didn’t even bother with mount equipment cause in all honestly, i see no benefit in this, cause i don’t have any input at all to pick and choose to my desires and just find it way to convenient too just click a button (or socket the mount journal socket with a mount equipment) and bam, 99% of the mounts i ride on magically can walk on water.
But going back to flying, you still yet to answer this question.
I can see where your coming from with WoW’s Flying, being nothing much more of Nocliping (Well, yesclipping, but ehh), but can i ask you, as much fun the the flying looks in GW2, is it intuitive to control? Once we get past the “it’s fun to fly this way” is it an efficient way to travel also? Does that game has flying in mind and incorporate it better then WoW, and if so, how?
And the reason why i bought up the Vehicle controls, cause GW2 seems to handle that much of the same as WoW did. You pick up a spear in that game and your in some sort of “Vehicle” where you get different controls to attack it with, in the same way if you happen to have a whack-amole hammer in darkmoon in WoW. But beside that, i bought that up, cause in WoW, compared to Flying via mounts (or “yes-cliping”), Vehicles in tend to have a max turn limit (Which for games usually, that’s fine) and sometimes counter-intuitive controls with aiming that’s pretty clunky sometimes and combined with the mediocre collision detection that is tied to latency. (Not saying you don’t fall though the floor, i’m saying collision detection happens late or early and hardly on point, even with a 0.5 second lag)
The money is already spent, you can’t turn back time. So yes it is pointless and I don’t see what this ‘consistency’ argument has to do with anything anyway.
True, but some forms of substance wouldn’t be very well-accepted even if they were engaging. For example, if you limited a mount’s flight time by size, weight, shape, or wingspan, you’d invariably be left with a set mounts that would be best for given situations.
There are certainly ways to make using a mount involve more meaningful/impactful decision-making, but those ways also inherently reduce the functionality of the mounts themselves. I’d be more open to discussing ways of diversifying mount functionality and making flying have a gameplay loop of its own, but I can’t see a way of doing that without damaging the design and intent of flying as it exists in WoW.
Part of the reason WoW mount collection is so robust and popular as an activity is because of the fact that they’re purely cosmetic.
You edit your posts a lot after you create them. You’ll have to forgive me if I miss something after the fact. I’m sometimes in the middle of creating a response when you add stuff.
My problem with flying is that it’s shallow and could be improved.
Mount Equipment wasn’t ephasized as a glowing example. It’s not perfect, and it’s still really shallow, but at least it’s some choice.
Because if you have no problem adding pet battle systems, what problem would you have with adding mount systems?
Sometimes, new information comes after the fact. It’s happens to me a lot, but i don’t consider that problematic.
All’s forgiven. Take all the time you need to read all of it.
I apologize if i sound like i’m repeating myself, but shallow as in what i’ve said?
Speaking of flying, (i meant to say flying here, not shallow, poor phrasing/segue on my part.) you yet again, didn’t answer my question that i have quoted. Maybe you did but you didn’t answer to it directly as i hope, so i’l just rephrase it.
Are you asking for WoW to handle it’s flying via by Vehicle controls?
I would also urge you to read my comments on about that and i’l quote you those again.
Their two different things.
You collect them the same and store them in your magical pokedex, sure, but the gameplay and systems between them aren’t exactly the same. And the problem more or less stems from the implementation side of things, on how it’s executed, and not the idea itself. I like both of the ideas, but one of the executions haven’t been really thought out all that much.
